Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Philippines

So, I have aligned my vacation schedule with the Japanese holiday calender and made my first trip out of Japan that did not end in the US, to the Philippines. Actually to the province of Cebu and I'm splitting my time between Cebu City and a resort called Pulchra. This is nice, Cebu city is kind of crazy, the resort is really nice.

My trip from Nagoya to Cebu was kind of slow, I planned this about a week ago and was unable to get a logical ticket. But I did make it to Cebu, with stops in Taipei and Manila before landing in Cebu. When you land in Manila, the first thing you do is get off the plane, walk through the baggage claim area and out the door, you are bound to see a bus that looks something like this:And you think to yoursel "that's cool, they put that crazy bus statue over there." But then you realize there are people on the bus statue and it's actually going somewhere. Turns out, this is the backbone of mass transit in the Philippines, more so when you get outside of Manila. And to make it even more fun, their is a big debate going on in the local papers to weather these bus' are a good idea. The debate goes like this, Point: They are old, unsafe, burn lot's a fuel and does not make a good image for the Philippines. Counterpoint: Yeah, but it only cost 8 peso's to ride. So far counterpoint is winning.During rush hour, people are hanging off the back and sitting on the roof.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

nice comment, however, people don't seat on the roof but just hanging!